Explorer.exe crashes when opening control panel / Slow XP ..

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

Hi all, the problem i have is that a lot of the time when i open Control
Panel (as a normal link) on the start menu, on a NEW user (ie. just created
it), explorer crashes and does the whole "has to close blah". Also i have
recently just fixed (hasnt happened since) my windows search from crashing
sometimes by reinstalling the dlls thanks to a help question on here .

Anyway, what is strange is that on the user i normally use (and the one i
created with xp when i installed), explorer doesnt crash at all whether i
open control panel as a link over and over (probably clicked about 20 times..
where as on other user would be well crashed by then) or if i have it as a
menu where u highight it and it opens.

At the point you might ask, "Why not just use your normal user?", well,
because i was creating a new user to try and fix another problem... with my
normal user i have to wait AGES after all the startup programs etc and hard
disk has stopped loading, before any of my programs i have clicked will open.
For example, if i click Firefox after everything has loaded (and not even hdd
is moving), usually i will have to wait a few mins before the thing will
open! - The problem is, my pc isnt slow, so i dont understand what the
problem with it is.. as the PC doesnt appear to be doing anything while i
wait. I'm using a P4 2.4Ghz with 1gb RAM.

After trying defrag, removing left over registry keys (used winoptimiser
from windows xp mag uk, i checked all the stuff before removing, and it was
just stuff from programs i had removed eg Ulead video watever), deleting
stuff in Prefetch....its still slow on actually opening my programs after
logging on. So i decided to try making a new user, then if it works on that i
suppose i could transfer stuff. Pretty much all the time it works right away
on the new user, except i cant use that user either, cos of the damn
explorer crashing....

If anyone has any suggestions or help.. i'd be happy to hear it

I was also thinking maybe a windows installation repair.. but i'm using SP2
so would it still keep my program settings ?.......... or if i leave it, i
guess i'll just be waiting 5 mins after logon before i can use my pc :| (one
time was bored also and counted something like 230 seconds before firefox
opened, AFTER everything had loaded eg. startup progs and hdd stopped moving)